Conventionally, there is known a camera that is provided in a vehicle so as to capture a vicinity of this vehicle. An image captured by this camera is, for example, displayed on a monitor for visibility auxiliary of a driver and used in sensing for detecting white lines on a road, an object approaching the vehicle, etc.
An extraneous matter such as a raindrop, a snowflake, dust, and mud is adhered to a lens of this camera to become an obstacle to the above visibility auxiliary and sensing, in some cases. Therefore, in recent years, there is proposed an extraneous-matter removing apparatus that ejects a compressed air toward the lens of the camera so as to remove the extraneous matter (see Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2014-037239, for example).
However, the aforementioned conventional technology has room for improvement in generating a compressed air with a simple and compact configuration.
Specifically, in generating a compressed air, there exists a case where a piston structure is employed for causing, for example, a piston to reciprocate in a cylinder so as to perform a series of cycles including intake and exhaustion. In this case, there exists a fear that the mechanism becomes complicated and the occupancy space becomes large. This problem is not limited to a case for generating a compressed air, and is common with a case for generating a compressed fluid obtained by compressing various gases and liquids, etc.